Uranus Pathfinder

Exploring the Origins and Evolution of Ice Giant Planets

Uranus

Uranus is the seventh planet from the Sun, the third largest and fourth most massive planet in the solar system. Uranus is an ice giant planet named after the Greek god Uranus. Sir William Herschel announced the discovery of Uranus on 13 March 1781. Uranus has a set of 27 natural satellites (moons), a system of rings, a highly asymmetric magnetic field, and orbits the Sun on its side with its poles pointing at the Sun during some parts of the uranian year. The names of the uranian natural satellites are taken from characters in the works of William Shakespeare (e.g., Titania, Oberon and Mab) and Alexander Pope (e.g., Ariel and Umbriel). The uranian system has only been visited once by a spacecraft, that was NASA's Voyager 2 spacecraft on 24 January 1986.

What is Uranus Pathfinder?

Uranus Pathfinder was a mission concept that was submitted to the European Space Agency's M3 call for medium class missions. Unfortunately it was not successful despite being highly rated.

The Uranus Pathfinder concept was for an orbiter of Uranus, launching in 2021 and arriving at Uranus in the 2037 time frame. The mission would perform the first detailed study of an ice giant planetary system which would fill the gaps in our understanding of the formation of the solar system, and the physical processes in the interiors and atmospheres of ice giants.

A short presentation is available here. The Uranus Pathfinder M3 mission proposal was also written up for publication and has been submitted to a special issue of the Experimental Astronomy journal. You can download the submitted version of this paper here.